New President’s message to members

I’m honoured to be appointed as President of Fife Chamber of Commerce and feel very lucky to be taking over from Peter Southcott at a time when the Chamber is in such good shape.

The Chamber only exists to benefit its members. The more members there are the greater those benefits will be as we can provide more opportunities to meet, learn from, collaborate with, and do business with each other. So it is good to know that we have seen steady growth in the membership over the last few years, and our forecasts show this continuing.

We now have a really extensive programme of events in place, with our monthly Fife Socials and regular Fife Learn events in addition to our annual Showcase events, including this year’s biggest ever Fife Business Awards. These will shortly be joined by our Fife International series as we aim to help our members build business with the rest of the world.

The Chamber is almost entirely self-funded, so I will continue to support the good work of Alan and the Chamber team to ensure it is run on a sound financial footing and continues to grow conservatively. With our new team now settled in, we will continue to increase contact with individual members, improve our marketing of events and enhance our presence on social media. We are currently recruiting for an additional member of staff to add capacity for our export document service, and allow us to expand our offering further, particularly for businesses interested in international trade.

On the representation front, the Chamber will continue to give its members opportunities to meet local and national politicians so that they can give their opinions on public policy directly. I aim to increase our engagement with the Scottish and British Chambers of Commerce so that our members can influence, and benefit from, the work they do on our behalf at the highest levels of government. I also hope to strengthen our links with our neighbouring Chambers.

As President I aim to help maintain Fife Chamber’s position at the heart of the Fife business community, as the Chamber continues to support its new and existing members to their benefit, and the benefit of the wider Fife economy.